Sesame Street's most disturbing bits

[cjd874]

How about this one?

So I get the educational point about brushing teeth...but it's so poorly set up. You can't sing well unless you brush your teeth? Seriously. And in terms of what makes this most disturbing: the talking, toothy bird almost looks furry. And the hands breaking through the mountain at the beginning...yeesh.

 

[Luke kun]

How about this one?

So I get the educational point about brushing teeth...but it's so poorly set up. You can't sing well unless you brush your teeth? Seriously. And in terms of what makes this most disturbing: the talking, toothy bird almost looks furry. And the hands breaking through the mountain at the beginning...yeesh.

What the frog was that? Maybe that was the people who made the Last Flight of the Champion.

 

[Drtooth]

How about this one?

So I get the educational point about brushing teeth...but it's so poorly set up. You can't sing well unless you brush your teeth? Seriously. And in terms of what makes this most disturbing: the talking, toothy bird almost looks furry. And the hands breaking through the mountain at the beginning...yeesh.

That's a very special cartoon, I guess... I know the earlier skits were meant to be weird and surreal, but there's something really off about this one. And coming from the same series that had a cartoon about an elevator opening to find 2 twin George Washington busts, that's saying something.

The imagery is too weird to be surreal or psychedelic. It's too organized to be nonsense. It really seems they built this world of...whatever you call it... weirdness isn't strong enough to be an understatement. But they built this entire odd world where, while nothing is supposed to make sense, it goes too far and bogs down in too many questions. And to me, the least of which are talking toothbrush or toothy bird. Toothy bird makes sense as it's a dental care skit. But it really feels like Mahatma (and yes, throwing a weird name for the sake of weird names is also used poorly here) is in a weird little world of his own. On the one hand, it does feel disturbing. On the other hand this could have been a great series of skits about Mahatma the bird and his Truman Show-esque "everything is made for him" world. But as a stand alone, it's just...everything is a BLAM except for the tooth care bits. There's too much going on at once. It feels that one level of weirdness could have been pealed off and it would have come across as strange but acceptably so. Either the mountains giving him breakfast or "How can you sing if your teeth aren't clean?" should have been taken out. Feels like they were trying to say "How can you be so cavalier about forgetting to brush your teeth? Dental hygiene is important, and you won't be singing and happy when the dentist has to pull out that drill." But it came out as "Purple! Because Ice Cream has no bones."

Disturbing is right. How could this have been considered coherent? I personally find the entire sketch hilariously bad. Yet, I tried making a YTP out o it and it was too freaking incoherent to do anything funny with. I'm not proud of it at all. Can't post it here because the only thing I could think of was immature sex jokes.

 

[fuzzygobo]

The Frog and The Ox. A prideful boastful little frog, trying to become the biggest creature on earth, inflates himself until he explodes.

Years later I found out this was an Aesop's Fable, and Sesame even produced a series of Fable cartoons (The Fox and the Grapes, etc.) But with no frame of reference, this cartoon seemed that much more jarring.

Aesop had a way of teaching lessons. Good behavior gets rewarded, bad behavior gets punished. Severely.

At least the colors in the background were nice.

 

[mr3urious]

This one here is mostly funny because of Jim Thurman's narration, which almost sounds ad-libbed, but what made me feel compelled to put this here was because kids just witnessed a sentient vacuum explode before their very eyes! The narrator doesn't so much as acknowledge the loss of poor Vanessa the Vacuum Cleaner.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm just going to call it.

These... just ...these.

Now, as one who has studied art, I get what they're trying to do here. But, let's face it. It's Philip Glass. Ain't NOBODY like Philip Glass! And they're exposing Philip FREAKING Glass to kids. Sure, it's not the outright body horror of "woman on LSD has a horrible freak out while looking in the mirror" or "Wanda suddenly becomes the world's fattest girl before your eyes." But gahhhuhhck. Say what you will about Disco and Sesame Street trying to cash in and or parody that fad, exposing them to Philip Glass's "art" should be a crime.

 

[Drtooth]

I've been doing some thinking about the first sketch I put on here. The one I like to refer to as "Little Girl becomes TLC show subject." Now, whatever someone could say about that, the message wasn't fun nor friendly.

Now, specifically for comparison I'm putting up a similarly themed PSA.

It has the same things technically. This one's more about boredom eating than inactivity. But the same gag still is present. It introduces the manner in a cute jingle, the kid doesn't get horrifically fat (he looks like a typical cartoon fat person), and here's where there's a major difference.

Wanda's cartoon essentially dooms her to the fate of being grotesquely huge, where as "Watch out for the Munchies" shows that it's a reversible process. The kid gets back to his original weight by the end of his PSA. Wanda probably winds up on a scooter.

 

[Luke kun]

This one here is mostly funny because of Jim Thurman's narration, which almost sounds ad-libbed, but what made me feel compelled to put this here was because kids just witnessed a sentient vacuum explode before their very eyes! The narrator doesn't so much as acknowledge the loss of poor Vanessa the Vacuum Cleaner.

IT'S MY FUUUNCTIOOOOOON!
(I had to think of the Brave Little Toaster when I saw that.)

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Wow,just wow what the heck were they even trying to teach kids with this one. This is disturbing as heck!

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Tv Tropes has a nice page on this matter -http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/SesameStreet